O'Toole plays the title role in a production of Shakespeare's Macbeth at the Old Vic in 1980. Photograph: Chris Ball/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The actor with his colt, Dr Slattery, at the Connemara Pony Show in August 1985. Photograph : Peter Thursfield/The Irish Times

As the actor looked in 1991. Photograph: PA

At the decommissioning ceremony to mark the closure of Devoy Army Barracks in Naas, Co Kildare in September 1998.

Actor Peter O'Toole, photographed in 1998. Photograph: Michael Walter

Eight-time Academy Award nominee Peter O'Toole in 2001 attending the London screening of The Lion in Winter. O'Toole was voted for an Honorary Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but he sent a handwritten open letter to AMPAS stating he was "enchanted" by the gesture, but said that since he is "still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright, would the Academy please defer the honor until I am 80?" Photograph: Reuters

With Meryl Streep after he received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement at the 75th annual Academy Awards 2003 in Hollywood. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

O'Toole arrives at the 79th annual Academy Awards Nominees luncheon at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills in February 2007. He was nominated for best actor for his role in Venus. Photograph: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

With his daughter actress Kate O'Toole at the Miramax Films pre-Oscar party celebrating the studio's Oscar nominees for Venus in Los Angeles, California, in 2007. Photograph: Fred Prouser/Reuters

In a scene from 2008 movie Dean Spanley.

Enjoying a drink with playwright Keith Waterhouse in 1999 in The Coach and Horses pub in Soho, London. Waterhouse died aged 80 in 2009. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA Wire